Perchance to Dream
by serpentnine
Summary: Raziel falls victim to an insidious spell, and dreams of lost brethren ... Cowrite with HopeofDawn;  tolerable grammar guaranteed!
1. Chapter 1

Perchance To Dream

Raziel falls victim to an insidious spell, and dreams of lost brethren ...

Notes:

A bit of background explanation: this was originally written for a long-running crossover RPG called Multiverse Haven (now sadly defunct). The basic premise of the game was that characters had been pulled from multiple worlds and marked as Chosen, in order to eventually restore a dying multiverse. The main storyline takes place in Nosgoth, however there may be occasional references to characters, magic systems and some borrowed vampire terminology from other canon sources.

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Warning: these are feudal-era vampires, who survive by hunting/taking what they need, and who have also been corrupted by the Taint. There may be references and/or scenes of fairly brutal treatment of humans as slaves/livestock. Such is life in a world where vampires rule ...

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Raziel led them from the blood-drenched darkness, and into the thin, false light of predawn.

There was little that could be done for Vivec's wing; the break was a bad one. The Ancient navigated the confines of the tunnels slowly, gradually paling as the heat of the fight faded and pain sank deep its talons. He would require more attention than could be given on the battlefield, and as human scavengers were already gathering to pick the dead clean of their meager possessions, Vivec could be left neither alone nor at the site of the massacre.

Some of the bodies that littered the square were still frozen, rimmed in hoarfrost and contorted in the agonies of their last moments. But of Tarrant himself, there was no trace.

Ordering all three Ancients to proceed afoot to the cathedral, Raziel shadowed them from above, until the healers he had summoned winged into view. The temple's great central apse was almost empty now of Ancients; only a single guard stood watch over the Reaver's latticework cask. Even the smeared blood on the floor was rapidly disappearing beneath scrubbing rags - a handful of white-clad human servants worked in rays of muted light cast through the stained glass by the rising sun. Raziel's passage added to their duties, for his every step tracked behind a thin rim of gore.

The Ancients' circular wind-chamber was quiet, but as Raziel entered, the breeze began to issue once more through vents under Raziel's boots. The air dried further the blood on his skin, making a caked layer that itched uncomfortably, but the zephyr also filled his wings and pressed him easily aloft. With scarcely a few hard wing-beats, Raziel touched down lightly at the landing that lead to the bathing antechamber. Despite his weariness, the prospect of resting whilst covered in gore held little appeal-not when such luxuries were so close to hand.

There was no attendant here now, simply a row of empty hooks for the hanging of robes. Through the haze of steam, the water that welled in the pools beyond the connecting arches seemed bluer than Raziel recalled, yet something of it was oddly familiar. Perhaps it was simply that he remembered the layout of the pools - they had changed little in three years - or the scent of clean, warmed water drawn up from the shadowed depths.

Raziel's armor clung to his skin, dried blood and gore thick as glue, and each piece had to be peeled off, pried from him. Eschewing the fragile hooks, he discarded segments of crusted, battered armor to the floor, leaving a trail of the implements of war behind him. The water, as he stepped down, was warmer than blood, hot against Raziel's deathly-chilled skin - a tangible reminder of how long it had been since he'd fed. When had he last taken nourishment? Perhaps he should investigate a wall niche, or summon assistance but... something about the circular pool beckoned.

Raziel sank down into the water with a sigh of relief, once again marveling at the silken texture of the liquid, so different from the burning of the Abyss ... a chill shivered over his skin, and he shook the unwelcome memory away. Unfurling his wings, Raziel sluiced water over his skin, washing the worst of the blood and grime away. Crimson swirls twined into the currents and disappeared, leaving ivory-pale skin behind as he moved to the deepest part of the bathing pool, feeling leaden weariness drag at his very bones. He had pushed himself too hard for too long, it seemed-even vampiric stamina had its limits, and the events of the last few nights had tested all of them.

Of late, it had felt as if this whole mad venture was on the verge of spiraling out of control, with only Raziel's hand upon the reins, exerting his will in an attempt to control the forces of history and things yet to be. Was this what Kain had felt when faced with his impossible choice, all those centuries ago?

And yet, despite his missteps, Kain had prevailed. Thus Raziel would do the same; vague misgivings about the future were not cause enough to break the oaths he had made to his Clan. They had suffered enough for his sake ...

Despite his dark thoughts, the warmth of the water was a potent soporific, sinking into aching, new-healed flesh, the tiny bubbles caressing his wings. Raziel sank deeper, closing his eyes and thinking only of the warmth, the soothing darkness underneath the water. Even a transient peace such as this was something to be cherished ...

Blood dried black twined from his skin into the sapphire quiet. The trickles joined, became streams, became more. And Raziel... Raziel...

...followed that river down

- and rested,

and the currents tore apart and spun out the tendrils of black, and rooted them in the unseen depths;

and they reached up dark-bladed fronds, strange leaf-blade ribbons buoyed by agar-slippery hollow nodes, which stretched to gather the faintest glimmer of light that dared filter down;

and in their twisting shadows, after an age like the aeons of man

- movement.

It was sharper, more sudden than the drift-wash sway of the storm-weed: a flash of scale or fin perhaps, a disturbance of the water at the corner of Raziel's awareness.

Curled and floating in the silent depths, the movement was more felt than seen. Slowly, closed eyes opened.

_Rahab?_ Raziel Whispered silently, without knowing why. His brother was gone, all of them were-dead and more than dead, all by his hand. The midnight waters made no reply, fronds wreathing around his form in a shadowed cocoon. Sunk deep, he felt no urge to leave this illusory shelter-the old instincts that should have led him to struggle free of the deadly water were for once utterly, completely silent.

The name echoed, resonating oddly within the confines of Raziel's mind, as if he both sent and received the Whisper. Vision brought little better clarity, for though the water was clear, eyes adapted to thin and more rarefied atmospheres were not well-suited to perception here. Still, Raziel could make out patterns of light and shadow. Lithe fragments of the latter danced through the dimness. Though time itself was swallowed, as a river vanishes into an inland sea, those flitting shapes seemed unreal in their swiftness, their agility, here in their domain.

There was another faint disturbance in the water, a swift ripple between the blades of black, and this time it seemed much closer - and directly behind Raziel._ You return to these waters oftener than I would suppose. _That echoed strangely, too - some part of Raziel playing both speaker and listener.

_Do I?_ In truth, Raziel wasn't sure where he was. It did not seem important, somehow ...

_It is ... peaceful here. Quiet. _The words echoed in the silence of his mind, as if in affirmation. Dimly, fossilized deep beneath layers of memory, was the faintest echo ... screaming without sound, echoes of agony. He flinched slightly in reaction-then it faded away, deeper into the water. Idly, he reached out, twining talons into storm-weed, feeling currents move across his skin. _Where are you?_

A certain kind of amusement, dark like the water, rippled._ Where? Why, here, Raziel - and everywhere. I swim in each pulse of your veins, coil in the jelly that wreaths the steel of your spine, dwell in the liquid that floods your lungs. _The sense of movement in the water, of something long and limber passing, from left to right behind Raziel's back, was close this time, perhaps even within reach. _The answer you should more rightly seek, Brother, is not of the nature of this medium that brakes your descent... but rather why you fell at all._

Raziel frowned slightly, a certain impatience rising past that immersive peace. _Riddles, Rahab? _His brother had always been fond of puzzles, and of wordplay, he remembered. Rahab and Melchiah, especially, had oft diverted themselves with twistings of logic and philosophy ...

He uncurled a bit, sculling hands through the water in an attempt to right himself-an effort made more difficult by the realization that he was not entirely sure which direction was up, or if it even mattered. His movements were clumsy, ill-favored next to the flickering, lithe movements of his unseen companions. I do not remember ... How had he gotten to this place? There was something tugging at him ... something left undone.

Frowning more fiercely, he kicked outward, using what he had learned in the drowned Abbey to propel himself through the water, towards the diffused light that glimmered down through the fronds. It was the merest shadow of the grace that the Rahabim had possessed, he knew ... but it was sufficient to make some progress.

Raziel's hard kick sent the shadows scattering, but they circled and regrouped soon enough, trailing alongside, curious - or predatory. The closer form kept pace as Raziel found a rhythm to his strokes - which took a moment, for this body was unused to swimming, and in the resistance of the water was the sense-memory laid down by another physical form: one thinner, lighter, its wings a tattered cape that dragged behind. _Memory is... difficult here_, agreed the echo, as it is difficult to measure the river's breadth from within its waters. A pause, and then the long undulation ghosted closer, a turbulence in the water just behind Raziel, slightly to his left. A cool, slightly tacky touch passed up the thick wrist-spar of one of his wings._ Though granted, your swimming is somewhat improved_.

_You shall turn my head with such lavish compliments, Rahab, _Raziel answered dryly, obliquely reassured by his brother's presence, even obscured as it was. Even the touch upon tightly folded wings-so useless here, in these environs, yet no less precious-did not provoke any retaliation.

He swam for a time, then paused, somewhat annoyed. _Is there no sky in this place?_ he asked his shadowy escort, somewhat peeved. The shafts of lights that these unnamed lurkers took such pains to avoid must come from *somewhere*, did they not?

The reply, when it came, was thick with irony and surprise both._ You have no idea, my brother, how deep we truly are. _An abrupt pulse of the water around him, and then smooth-skinned arms were enwrapping Raziel's waist, webbed and gripping-textured talons splaying over his lowest ribs. _This way, Raziel._

Acceleration was sudden and startling, the water abruptly a solid pressure against Raziel's face and chest. His heels scraped over silvery-slick scales; Rahab's body seemed very long, very supple, and each stroke of his - legs? tail? - propelled them both as far and as fast as a dozen of Raziel's kicks. The forest thinned around them, dark tips of waving fronds appearing overhead, sweeping to the side, and disappearing into the gloom behind. The water grew lighter, and as it did the flitting shadows nearby fell away, one by one.

It was impossible to gasp under water, but Raziel held on to those arms with a near-crushing grip as the underwater world rushed by him in a blur of light and shadow. _...Rahab!_ It was a timely reminder that this was his brother's element indeed ... how deep *had* he gone?

The light intensified by degrees, until the water they traversed had turned translucently pale, aqua shimmers rippling above them. There was a subtle flinch in the slick-skinned body pressed to his back; and they abruptly veered to the side, paralleling the surface rather than approaching it.

_Rahab, what ...?_ And then Raziel realized. Ah-of course. The sun. Regret seeped through the Whispered words. _My apologies, brother. I did not think._

They passed into a pool of shadow-and Rahab changed direction once more, gliding lithely upward. They breached the surface of the water together, waves rippling outward. Raziel blinked water from his eyes, gazing about him; and realized they had surfaced in a rocky grotto, sheer overhanging cliffs of mossy rock sheltering them from the glare of the sun.

_On the contrary, Raziel;_ Rahab cleared the water from his throat, and the sound was raspy with the liquid, but his tenor laugh was as clear and sweet as any siren's, "- you think far too much." His arms slipped from around Raziel; the silvery-blue skin of those limbs was darkened and cracked in a long stripe, elbow to hand, where the light had fallen too brightly upon it. As Raziel turned his head, shaking the obfuscating water from his eyes, he saw clearly - Rahab's long body, finned and scaled, marbled in a palate of violet and green and every shade of blue in the heart of the sea. His brother's smile was a shark's, quick and ancient and very sharp.

And then Rahab ducked underwater again, his body a silvered streak, then a rippled blue shadow. His whisper echoed once more, a warning or a promise: _And we all make our sacrifices. _The water closed around him, and he was gone, the surface placid and silent, hinting nothing of what ghosted beneath.

The surrounding walls were steep, nearly sheer, hollowed and notched by wind and salt. They met the water in rough-folded waves, forming a multitude of small hollows and coves. There, half-hidden in overhanging shadows, dark glassy orbs bobbed in the water, clicking against rock or silently brushing the hanging green. There were perhaps fewer of the spheres now, and no sign of whatever tides had driven them to take shelter against this bastion of stone. But something about the distant horizon, when Raziel looked out from the grotto, seemed... not right, seemed malicious.

There was no welcoming beach shore here; stony walls rose straight and slick from the water's embrace, adorned with clinging ferns and hanging moss. And adept as Raziel might be in the air, he was certainly no flying fish, to leap from one element to the next with naught more than a flip of a nonexistent tail ...

It appeared, then, that Raziel would have to make a much less ... dramatic entrance. Swimming through the water to the nearest rocky cliff, he was uneasily aware of his clumsy splashing, nothing like the sleek and silent movement Rahab had shown. Before, he had not felt the faintest trace of unease, guarded as he had been by his brother's company. Now ... the waters suddenly seemed a great deal more opaque, ominous. He had a vague, half-formed memory of something else lurking in their depths ...

Shaking away his womanish fears, Raziel reached outward, brushing talons over the rocky walls. It was good stone-porous, yet solid enough for purchase without flaking and crumbling under the edges of his talons. Glossy spheres nudged against him as he craned his neck in order to gauge the best route, moving in silent swirls and patterns of their own, at the mercy of the water's currents. But whatever their purpose, they kept their secrets, shadowed and half-submerged, as Raziel sank talons into the stone before him and began to climb.

The first long pull was a hard one, Raziel's body weighted by the sucking water and whatever forces had drawn him down to begin with. But the water sheeted from his wings, poured from his armor, and his movements became less encumbered with every bodylength. The rock was cracked and fissured, worn into recessed canyons. The climbing was easier, there, and the sharpening gusts of wind were muted to mere breaths, but the close walls afforded little space for the spread of Raziel's wings, and he kept them tight-folded. The water grew distant below him as he ascended; the atmosphere thickened, as if heralding a stormfront.

Raziel reached for a final handhold rear the rim of the plateau. His talons slid firmly into the mossy crack, but as he placed his weight there, the entire be-greened ribbon of stone peeled away from its parent mass, and Raziel had to scramble for purchase in the sudden tumbling landslide. Chunks of stone pelted his head and back, man-sized boulders crashed down so close the the wind of their passage kissed his skin, and only Raziel's quickness kept him from joining the fall. The rock was rotten close to the exposed surface, he saw, for the scar from where the fin had parted was wormed with the channels of anchoring roots. For all their seeming fragility, the wreathing ferns and vines did their part, with the wind, to gnaw away at the walls.

Even Raziel's sharp ears could not make out the sound of stone falling into water, so far below. But the palms of his hands sensed well enough the vibration of a footfall, directly overhead, very massive. The voice that accompanied it was just as heavy, a bass stone rumble. "'Tis enough to cause one to wonder if you mean to play at warfare, or at farming."

"... Turel?" The name escaped him before he could call it back, born of surprise. Raziel craned his head backwards, his awkward position ensuring that, try as he might, he could not see if his younger sibling truly was above him; even his nose failed him, as all he could scent was the damp earth now liberally adorning his talons.


	2. Chapter 2

Even Raziel's sharp ears could not make out the sound of stone falling into water, so far below. But the palms of his hands sensed well enough the vibration of a footfall, directly overhead, very massive. The voice that accompanied it was just as heavy, a bass stone rumble. "'Tis enough to cause one to wonder if you mean to play at warfare, or at farming."

"... Turel?" The name escaped him before he could call it back, born of surprise. Raziel craned his head backwards, his awkward position ensuring that, try as he might, he could not see if his younger sibling truly was above him; even his nose failed him, as all he could scent was the damp earth now liberally adorning his talons.

A new talon-hold proved as rotten as the first, giving way with a fresh shower of stones and soil. "I have, in fact, decided to-unh!-become a badger, and burrow my way through the rest of my nights," Raziel snapped in annoyance. "Are you here merely to congratulate yourself on your own cleverness?" He threw one hand up, reaching for the top of the cliff, groping for any rock or soil anchored by more than the feeblest memories of gravity ...

The edges of Raziel's hand brushed smooth stone, not pitted like the rock of the massif - and then that stone enclosed his talons. Turel's low chuckle was tangible, the sound rattling loose pebbles. With a single motion, effortlessly smooth, he hauled Raziel up from the precipice. Out of the shelter of the rock, the wind was stiff, one moment whipping Raziel's now-dry hair about his face, the next casting grit and salt into his eyes. The top of the plateau was bleak, a great gray plain, nearly flat but crossed by the serpentine lines of low walls, unmortared and newly raised, and by cracked ravines that might have been defensive works. There was little to obstruct the wind, or the view - and there could be no missing Turel.

And it was unmistakeably Turel - had Turel's face and talons and presumptuous tone. But there were changes, now, in the fanned ears that swept back from crested scalp, in the strange musculature across shoulders and chest, in the olive and green and mossy veins that chased Turel's skin... and in sheer scale. "While you are certainly ill-tempered as a badger, little brother - were I you, I'd leave the 'burrower' distinction to Zephon."

Raziel looked up-and up. Turel had always been the largest of them all, both in height and in breadth-much to Dumah's eternal dismay-but now ... now he seemed as massive as one of his Clan's fortifications. "Little?" Raziel remarked sardonically, raising a skeptical eyebrow as he was set ungently upon his feet. "Has the rarefied air up there addled your senses, my brother? Or do you now consider yourself my elder?"

Another creature might have felt a qualm or three in challenging a vampire of Turel's obvious-attributes. But Raziel knew his brother well, in war and in peace, and while their long association had never been quite as amicable as he and Rahab, he still knew Turel. His strength, his keen mind-and his petty jealousies, his attempted rivalries with Raziel for Kain's favor.

Turel, along with Dumah, had thrown him into the Abyss. Raziel would not play the helpless victim a second time.

"What *have* you been eating?" Raziel added, taking Turel's measure. "Do the others know you have been taking their share of the blood-tithe?"

"Your age, whatever it is, has not improved your manners, that much is clear." Turel snorted, the sound like that of an irate bull. He shifted his weight forward, employing his intimidating bulk - made still greater by an intricately tooled suit of empire platemail - to full advantage. With a broad-taloned right hand, Turel poked with apparent dismay at Raziel's simple, much-battered pauldron. The top of his brother's head just barely reached the ridge of Turel's collar bone.

His first collar bone. Because below that, under the straps and plates of Turel's mail, were stranger architectures of bone and muscle. The gusting wind whipped Turel's clan drape forward, and Kain's secondborn pushed his cape back - also with a right hand, though he did not remove the first from Raziel's shoulder. "And while your concern over my diet is... fraternal, it is misplaced. 'Tis not I who prefers to sup upon rawboned, musk-blooded males."

"Why settle for a cud-chewing doe when you can hunt the stag?" Raziel retorted, picking up the thread of the argument with the ease of familiarity. He crossed his arms, unimpressed by Turel's sartorial ambitions, elegant as they were. For an elder of Turel's stature, such armor in battle was more cumbersome than necessary. He tilted his head, eyeing the extra pair of taloned hands curiously. The overabundant size, even the ears-these things seemed ... familiar, even expected of Kain's second Lieutenant. But the extra limbs ... those were new and surprising.

"You have acquired new appendages of your own, I see," Raziel observed, lifting an eyebrow. "One pair of hands was no longer sufficient for your needs?"

"So queried by a man who avoids the clean work of the forge like plague-ridden prey." Turel shrugged his cape back further, lifted his hands for Raziel's inspection. They were in all respects identical to his first pair, beginning a few inches beneath his proper shoulders. The plates of Turel's armor lent to his every motion the faint rasping sound of oiled metal, audible even in the breeze. "Tell me, did you intend to damage and scar your equipment so? For fashion, prithee tell? Mayhap you feel the gouges and dents lend you a rakish air?"

Raziel shrugged. "At least they are scars honestly won in battle. Would you have me stop to hammer out each dent and scratch, all for my vanity's sake?" The spars of his wings shifted slightly, and his voice hardened. "Indeed, where exists an armorer who could fit a winged creature? The last of that breed met their end long ago, at the moment of Vorador's demise."

The tip of Turel's ear twitched, but he seemed otherwise not to notice the change in Raziel's tone. His eyes narrowed as he traced a talon edge over a dent so deep it split the edge of Raziel's pauldron. It was more than a question of hammering it out - a smith would need a complicated set of forms and jigs to repair such damage. "A battle? This looks more as if you won it crashing headfirst down a mountainside." As if unconsciously, his lower left hand drifted to the hilt of one of the heavy hammers he carried slung at his side, stroking the wire-wrapped shaft thoughtfully. But the mention of a - possibly - more preeminent smith than himself caught Turel's attention. "Vorador? Hn." His gold-green gaze flicked to Raziel's with a kind of acid amusement. "And as I recall, you had no reason to ask me when last we met, now did you?"

"Even had I reason, you would hardly have been in a position to oblige," Raziel pointed out, his tone as chill as midwinter ice. The gross and misshapen *thing* that Turel had become, glutted on blood and goaded to insanity by the Hylden-there had been almost nothing left of the clever and skilled artisan's mind, to say nothing of the ability once exercised by those hands. In comparison, the wretched wraith that Raziel had been had fared somewhat better; he, at least, had managed to keep his sanity.

"How did you come to inhabit such a prison? As ironic as it was to find you thus, you were never one to submit so meekly to confinement ..." Raziel tilted his head, golden eyes narrowed as he thought on the matter. "What enticements did the Hylden offer that led you to such a place?"

Turel's gaze slid back to Raziel's battered equipment, though this time there was something of avoidance to Turel's apparent distraction. "The usual, Raziel: power, blood, escape. The Empire persisted a long time after your fall, even flourished, perhaps. But the decay had taken root - each decade more land was blighted, fewer humans lived through the summer heat to work what remained. And we began to grow... not ourselves. I think you saw the result of that, did you not? One can only watch one's children devour each other so many times. The chance at a new beginning seemed a blessing, and the pit no greater purgatory than I'd departed."

Turel looked up with a sudden fierce flash of teeth - his fangs were nearly long as a man's finger. "And, frankly, you should be grateful that I learned to tolerate confinement."

Raziel's brows knitted at Turel's enigmatic statement. Was that some manner of threat? Did Turel dream of pursuing recompense for his death at Raziel's hand-or did he simply refer to the Hylden machinations that had put him in that pit for Raziel to find?

"Gratitude?" He turned away, sidestepping Turel's bulk to walk further from the cliff's edge, surveying the fissured expanse of the plateau-yet never exposing his back to his brother. Not fully. "Search as I might, I find little in our shared history that would inspire such." The memory of Turel's talons, dug deep into savaged and bleeding flesh, was vivid still ... the screaming agony of torn flesh and bone compounded by utter betrayal, thrice over.

Turel's low laugh was, again, a thing as much felt as heard. "You are a less knowledgeable jailor than the Hylden, at least." He gestured with open hand to the plain before them. "Do you mean to tell me you don't know where you are? What this is?"

Raziel transferred his scowl from the fissure at his feet to his brother's hulking form. "What riddles are you playing at now, Turel? Of course I know where I am."

Then he stopped short, caught by his own hasty words. Where *was* this place? He had been in the water, he knew-the Lake of the Dead? Which meant he was now above its shores ... but while the Lake had possessed cliffs aplenty, the barren plateau that stretched before him was far too large and untenanted for familiarity ... He turned slowly, trying to get his bearings. He had crossed and re-crossed Nosgoth, both in the living world and that of the dead, in so many times, so many different ages ... what age *was* this?

The air behind him seemed to shimmer as if in a heat haze, all unnoticed, as Raziel searched for the clues that would lead him to familiarity with this place. For he was where he should be. *That*, at least, he was sure of...

Turel's expression was a familiar one; the larger vampire clearly caught between the twin pleasures of lecturing his brother on a point, and knowing something Raziel did not. "In that case, you surely recognize this... fortress," he said, mouth twisting wryly as he gestured at the tangle of walls and structures before them, and the height of the cliffs behind. "It is well the builder was starting from such natural advantage, or all would have been lost to the first serious assault." Turel followed with long strides as Raziel moved, falling in beside his brother. Perhaps not coincidentally, he kept clear of the haze that trailed Raziel, the places where his world grew thin and turbulent in response to the winged vampire's will, however unconsciously it was applied.

Pacing over to the nearer edge of one of the walls, Raziel poked an experimental talon at it, frowning when the unmortared stone crumbled under the touch. "These are no walls of yours, that is for certain," he allowed, giving his brother his due. Arrogant Turel might be, but the Turelim fortresses had been some of the finest in the Empire. He surveyed the fortifications, his scowl deepening as he saw their slipshod design. These walls might slow an attack-perhaps-but little more than that.

Unwilling to admit he did not know the purpose of the haphazard walls before him, Raziel continued to walk, thoughtfully pacing their outer edges.

In some places, the walls were a little better - the stones jointed together with care, though those sections of barrier were not particularly extensive. A few of the foundations were rather cleverly placed: canyon-like walled ravines to channel an attacking horde into a compact mass; platforms from which to drop flammable oil or water. But in other places, walls had apparently collapsed and new ones built atop the unstable rubble. This fortress had clearly seen repeated attack - and of many different kinds, by the evidence before Raziel. Another hard gust of wind whipped dust against them; the stormfront was thicker now, but the scent of the wind held not the clean crackle of lightning. The clouds seemed to behave unnaturally, as if they filtered in from above. And there was something about the wind... something alien, something stifling, repressive... dead.

"Nor am I able to affect their condition," admitted Turel from beside his brother, taking two strides to Raziel's three, as he looked out over the border. He hissed, a short sound of annoyance. "My dominion, as you well know, does not extend so far as it once did."

"Your dominion?" Raziel said distractedly, his troubled gaze having been drawn up to the gathering storm. His wings were drawn tight to his back, taloned hands flexing unconsciously as he contemplated it. It felt as if he should be expecting an attack ... yet the idea was ridiculous. A mere smattering of wind and rain hardly had the capacity to harm him ...

Forcing his attention back to Turel, Raziel asked, "Whose fortress is this, then, that you must lurk around the borders of it in such a manner?" And what had happened to Turel's own fief?

Turel smiled again, a toothy and aggressive baring of teeth, clearly enjoying his brother's confusion. "Why, it is yours, Raziel."

"Mine?" Raziel was beginning to feel like some manner of echo chamber, repeating his brother's words until they made some manner of sense. He looked at the fortress again, and shook his head. "You are mistaken, Turel-I had never claimed the lands around the Lake. This is not my fief ..." Such an ill-omened fief it would have been, were that the case!

And yet ... the walls were familiar, in some vague way. Not as if he had any hand in building them, no, but as if he had ordered their construction some centuries before, and left the planning to another ...

"The what?" Turel frowned, glanced behind, heavy-horned brow furrowed, as if he expected the waters there to have suddenly vanished. They had not; that, at least, was perhaps reassuring. "No. I half believe our piscine brother moves that minor circle of hell about as he pleases. It is not - precisely - the lake you knew." And then again, sometimes it was. Landmarks were chancy things, he'd come to learn. "In any case Raziel, rest assured, this place is most certainly yours. Or rather - part of you."

"I may not reach your rather exalted heights when it comes to building fortifications, brother, but I assure you, I would never allow walls so shabby," Raziel retorted. Turel's amusement at his expense was becoming rather tiresome, as was his insistence that ownership of this ruin belonged to Raziel, and no other.

His mood darkened, as if to match the storm-clouds overhead. "And if you are minded to tell me these walls are naught but the pitiful remainder left after my fall, I will tell you that I walked the lands of the Razielim after my return. There was nothing so intact as this."

Turel's ears twitched, and he leaned in close, as if to study a strange or amusing curiosity. "So... you think yourself still in Nosgoth, do you." Turel cupped the hilt of one of his hammers again, a contemplative habit. "You are not," he said at last, ignoring Raziel's glower. "For this," Turel straightened, swept his hand over the horizon like a magician proudly revealing a stage trick, "is a dreamscape, an illusion, a metaphor. And this... structure, such as it is, is a representation of the boundary of you and that which is not you. Do you begin to comprehend now?"

Raziel stared at him, refusing to release Turel's gaze, his arms crossed and feet planted. "What you are saying is-that this is not real." There was a low rumble beneath them, as if the stones beneath their feet had shifted just slightly ... "That *you* are not real, and this is some manner of delusion. If that is so-" And the mere thought of it brought an unacknowledged pang, deep within, "-then tell me why I should listen to you, if you are a mere figment and not my bro..."

And then there was a second pang. A taloned hand seemed to come out of nowhere, and Turel had Raziel by the central clasp of his pauldrons in a heartbeat. "Do I look like a delusion to you, Raziel?" Turel growled, jerking Raziel off the ground to snarl at him from a talon's-breadth distance. "Do I feel unreal? We may be devoured, but _we are not nothing_."

"Release me, Turel," Raziel snarled right back, "Or unreal or not, I shall see whether you still bleed!" He little liked being manhandled and left dangling like some wooden puppet, and if it took violence to make Turel show the respect due his elder, Raziel was more than willing to supply it!

"You claim this place is an illusion, yet you are not. You claim you are dead and devoured, yet you still exist. Do you take me for a fool?" he spat. "If this is naught but the hazy remnants of my own longings, than so be it ... but you cannot have it both ways, brother!"

Turel seemed disinclined to let Raziel go. "This place? You are a fool if you imagine that I would take responsibility for the metaphors that you" in emphasis, or in indignation at Raziel's stubborn expression, Turel gave him a hard shake, like a terrier with a rat, "employ to clothe your own aspects!"

"Enough!" Raziel struck like a snake. One taloned hand slashed for Turel's eyes, and when his brother flinched reflexively, the other struck unerringly for the arm that held him, slicing downward to sever the cabled tendons of the arm that held him captive. Massive that arm might be, and layered with dense muscle-yet the talons of an elder could punch through platemail. Armor, skin and tendon parted, and the taloned fingers spasmed, dropping Raziel to the ground.

Hissing in pained surprise, Turel grabbed again at his brother with an opposing hand. Raziel ducked under it, snarling. "For all your pretenses at stature, brother, it seems you too have your flaws. Or will you blame those upon me as well? I your jailor, your killer, and now apparently your creator!"

Turel's ears were laid back, flat against his skull. He shook his own purple-dark blood from his talons, where a rivulet had slicked the cutting edges. Another hand reached to the forearm guard, bending back the place Raziel had gouged - the metal sealed itself into a smooth surface as quickly as did Turel's more naturally armored skin. A third hand unhooked one of the heavy hammers from where it hung at his belt - in the hands of any other creature, it would have been a maul, four feet long with a massive head, one side flared and the other a deadly hook. He brandished it in Raziel's fast-moving direction. Turel's roar made his brother's teeth vibrate.

"I would not be forced to manhandle you if you would simply listen to reason, instead of behaving like a jilted swain!"

As Raziel drew breath to reply to that, the curved, hook-end of another heavy hammer caught at the back of Raziel's knee - keeping track of all the limbs of an opponent like this would take some practice - and jerked him entirely off his feet. "My creation was most certainly not by your hand, little brother!"

As Raziel fell, he rolled, just ducking the other hammer-blow as it thudded against the earth where he had been only a moment again. In another instant, he was on his feet again, slashing at those muscled arms. Aiming to wound, rather than maim-for this was merely another spat between brothers, not a true battle, and just one in a series that spanned centuries.

"Twas you that made such an assertion, not I," Raziel retorted. "You always were an upstart prey-grabber, even as a fledge-why should I not be surprised that you have sprung up like a weed amongst the brambles of my mind?" Turel attempted another swing-and Raziel leaped over it, straight up as if he intended to take to the air, only to lash out with one booted and razor-edged foot instead, smashing it into that broad-planed face.

"You are *dead*, Turel-dead and sent to the maw of the Elder God!" Raziel snapped in defiance. "And the thing I am speaking to now cannot be anything more than a shade summoned of my own misgivings!" For he had known what the Elder God had been, by the time he had encountered Turel, had he not? Yet he had murdered his brother anyway ...

Turel twisted away, not swiftly enough, as Raziel gouged through metal and, effortlessly, leather, separating one pauldron from Turel's skin. The gold-gleaming piece of armor clinked hollowly as it hit the stones underfoot. "What madness are you - grragh!" Turel caught the brunt of the kick on his heavy chest and shoulder plates, but it still rocked him back and spoiled his aim as he grabbed at Raziel's ankle. He'd intended to smash his fool sibling to the ground, but Raziel twisted like a cat - so damnably fast! - and fell into a crouch, the better to spout his inane conjectures, evidently.

"If that were true, you primping peacock," Turel hissed, spitting blood and striding forward, "then how did you retain the ability to sieve through grates? Or to swim? Dolt! We are forged from slivers of the same soul!"

"Oh? And in your forge, does any metal, once broken, whether plainest tin or purest gold, leap together of its own volition?" Raziel retorted. He kicked out again, brutally slamming a foot into Turel's armored knee. Those, at least, his brother only had two of-but Turel's leg was as solid as the trunk of an ancient oak. Raziel's attack accomplished little, save denting the armor there. Reeling back from that blow, he sensed Turel's fist only a moment before the blow knocked him sprawling once more.

Extra limbs were a decided advantage in combat, it seemed.

Fighting the sickening lurch of the ground beneath him, Raziel doggedly pushed himself onto his feet once more. "The powers I gained were not ... " he staggered a bit, losing the thread of his argument in the process. "... not ...how could you have remained? The Elder God ..."

"Do gears, forged to interlink, not match when placed together - no matter how long they have remained separate?" Turel made to step forward, talons outspread, and was caught up short as his buckled shinguard refused to move as intended. Refused for a moment, only - for as Turel turned his attention to it, the metal smoothed itself back into its original arc. But that moment was more than enough time for Raziel to recover and dart to the side, avoiding being seized again. Turel rumbled his irritation, lifted his fist. "Enough of your ravings! The Elder God this, the Elder God that - you sound like that squid's mouthpiece." Turel brought his fist down - not to strike, but rather as if pulling on some invisible handful of cords. And even as his brother moved for better advantage, his armor, indeed every piece of metal upon Raziel... seemed to increase in weight a hundredfold.

Yellow eyes narrowed as Raziel grunted under the sudden weight, dropping to one knee. "I am no creature's mouthpiece-not Kain's, not that so-called God's, and certainly not yours!" He pushed upward, to his feet, with visible effort. Only the prodigious and unnatural strength granted him in the Abyss allowed him to do even that, and his movements were as hampered as if he had one of the Ancients' massive puzzle-blocks pressing upon his shoulders.

The course of their battle had taken them further from the fortress walls-and closer to another crumbling edge of the plateau. Waves lapped eagerly below as Turel advanced-and Raziel was forced to give way. "You speak so cavalierly of that 'squid'-should I return your favor, brother, and deliver you unto him as you once did me?"


	3. Chapter 3

The course of their battle had taken them further from the fortress walls-and closer to another crumbling edge of the plateau. Waves lapped eagerly below as Turel advanced-and Raziel was forced to give way. "You speak so cavalierly of that 'squid'-should I return your favor, brother, and deliver you unto him as you once did me?"

"Oh, so now you think you didn't already sacrifice me to that thing, after all. And you dared accuse me of inconsistency!" The wind whipped higher, curls of dim, void-like cloudstuff scudding over the fissured plateau, scattering against the low fortress walls. In his fury, Turel neither slowed nor turned aside, noticing not as his hooves sank deep prints into the softer, pebbly soil. His talons lashed out, and Raziel staggered just barely out of reach once more, moving quite cursedly well under a weight that should have left him prostrate. "Stand still and listen to - damnation! You skip about like a Meridian jumping be-" Turel's breath caught, "get down, Raziel!" and the larger vampire lunged for him once more.

"I do not-" and then the rest of Raziel's words were lost in the sudden rising roar of the wind. As the air vibrated with a scream like that of a dying soul, it all seemed to happen at once: razored dragon-shapes forming out of the clouds, toothy maws descending upon him; his own attempt to dodge Turel as his brother's massive form fell upon him like an avalanche; and the cliff's edge crumbling beneath them both, sending them cascading downward in a tumble of boulders and debris, towards the waiting jaws of the water below.

Turel! Fear and rage roiling in his chest, Raziel sank talons deep into his brother's armored shoulders as they tumbled, uncaring if they also sank into flesh. He *heaved*, feet scrabbling against an also-falling boulder and thrusting outward-

-and wings flared out, beating hard against Turel's weight as Raziel bore them upward. The unnatural weight of his armor had vanished as if it had never been, the metal transmuted into the crimson silks and dark leathers of Ancient-enchanted make. Raziel grunted in effort as he lurched sideways, away from the cliff-edge now cascading into the waters below.

"What in Kain's name is *that*?" For he knew, even before Turel answered, that those dark clouds, roiling with reptilian menace, were nothing that belonged in this place ...

Above them, a great chunk of the edge of the plateau had *vanished,* the gap still crackling with heat-shot haze, like the breath of the void. A pair of long bodies passed overhead, the screams from their shifting, boiling throats the sound of hell itself, their wings churning the sky. The wash of their passage rocked Raziel, came close to heaving him and his burden both into the side of the cliff.

Turel kicked out against a fin of mossy stone, keeping it at a distance. His deep purple blood slicked Raziel's talons and the side of Turel's neck, the tip of one broad ear tattered. One of his hammers tumbled along with the other rubble, at last to hit the water with a distant splash. Resolutely, Turel did not look down. "Doubtless the same things that have been tearing at your barriers for the last few days," he shouted back.

The roiling cloud-forms, in one moment indistinct and in the next scaled and dripping-fanged, split apart, circling to the right and left. Turel wrapped an arm firmly around Raziel's silk-clad thigh. "This would all be very much easier if you had a proper citadel."

"As it would be if you were somewhat *lighter*, brother," Raziel snapped. They were now fully clear of the dissolving cliff-but had exchanged one danger for another, for in the open air, they were now vulnerable to attack from all sides.

Raziel backwinged frantically as a dragon-toothed shape dove at them, missing only by inches. The backwash of its wake was an icy and moldering reek of the grave, one that chilled down to the bone. Another shriek ripped through the sky, and Raziel dove, using gravity as well as his wings to give him the speed he required as the second dragon lunged at Turel's dangling form with snapping jaws, sullen purplish lightning crackling along its length. The water rushed up at them with dizzying speed; and at the last moment Raziel veered, swooping to the side with desperate skill, riding the wind upwards once more as the cloud exploded against the lake's waters.

"You truly know nothing of this?" Raziel asked, once he had a few scant moments in which to concentrate on something other than flight. "Surely there is a way to battle these creatures!" He also wished to know how an outside power could intrude upon this place; but such questions were hardly important when placed against their survival.

"I'd be of more assistance if you'd quit dangling me like some kind of lure," Turel snarled, his talons gripping Raziel hard enough to bruise, even through the Ancient-crafted armor. He could neither swing nor throw his hammer like this! As if flight alone were not sickening enough - and over water, too! "Quit dodging the issue - at least go repair the thrice be-damned catapults!"

The fallen dragon was reforming itself upon the waves, but not swiftly. It seemed hampered somehow, as if something in the water was hostile, was gnawing away at its substance. The other creature, though, was unencumbered. It moved like a thing a fraction of its mass, wheeling tightly to come at them once more.

Turel hissed a curse, clawed at the sculpted plate of his own forearm guard. The piece of metal came loose in his talons, he extended his hand... and the metal shot away from him, a gold-green bolt, its force as great as that which had borne Raziel down only a minute before. The chunk of metal carved a great rent in their amorphous attacker, and the dragon faltered, but only for a moment, before the gap closed up as if it had never been.

"Catapults?" Raziel echoed, bewildered. But he dipped one wing, slipping sideways in the air to circle around, darting and weaving just ahead of their draconic pursuer, back towards the fortress remnants of before. The dark clouds from which their attackers had sprung massed before them, roiling low and ominous upon the horizon, and Raziel could not help but feel a twinge of unease as their nearness.

The dragon coiled, shifted-and then sprang forward, lunging through the air like a striking snake. In desperation, Raziel folded his wings and dropped, feeling the dark wind of the creature's passage above them. Its scream of frustration and rage shattered the air, rattling the stones below.

Raziel snapped his wings outward again, trying to break their fall-but the distance was too short. They hit with stunning force, tumbling onto the cracked stones of the fortress-walls in an ungainly jumble of limbs and wings and bruised dignity.

"Move!" Raziel ordered, shoving one of Turel's arms off of him as he climbed to his feet, craning his neck to see from which direction the next attack would come. "So, Turel-where are these mysterious and so-neglected catapults of yours?"

Turel snarled in Raziel's direction as he levered himself to his own feet, but he was plainly pleased to be back on solid ground. "Since you do not see one, it appears there are none in this location, now doesn't it?" The light flickered, faded, intensified as the roiling clouds above blotted it out, making it difficult to locate their assailants. But with a roar of chill wind, *something* ripped a man-sized block of chipped stone from the length of crenellated wall near them.

Hammer gripped in two hands, Turel vaulted atop a crumbling stone platform and swung into the boiling cloud, the bright metal of his weapon arcing a great furrow into the cloudwall; the rent spilled grave-cold mist. "This would, however, be an excellent location for one!" Turel shouted, over the thing's soul-scream. "Bladed walls would also - oomph!" Turel ducked, deflecting a swipe of arm-long shadowy talons with one of his remaining heavy gauntlets, so that the claws screeched over his back plates, instead of sinking through to the flesh beneath.

"You wish me to start constructing one *now*?" Raziel barked back, throwing a telekinetic bolt into that roiling mass. The bolt punched inward, but otherwise did nothing, the deadly mist roiling around it untouched. "With what, exactly, should I build? Stone and my own blood? Or do you expect me to wish one into existence?"

A return strike crashed into the stones beneath his feet, the wall shuddering with the impact. Fangs bared in a frustrated snarl, Raziel swiped at a stray tendril with bloodied talons, even as his skin shrank in revulsion at the touch of that mist.

The dense haze retreated, but the stuff that Raziel had cut clung to his skin, decaying and thick, cold as if it drank the remnant warmth from his skin, ate away at the rivulets of Turiel's blood that coated Raziel's claws. The deathly ichor left a scum of white hoarfrost on Raziel's talons as it dissipated.

"Wish, actualize, conceive, whatever label you wish to apply - yes! Cease this prevarication, and just -" Turel turned his head, caught a glimpse of Raziel's expression. Hissing a curse, Turel ripped away his previously-dented shinguard. Obliging his will, the metal came apart in his hands, breaking into wickedly jagged chunks. The pieces shot out into the chill mist, each bolt trailing gold-hot starfire. Howling, the cloudstuff recoiled, giving them a moment's reprieve. "Remember, Raziel, Kain's instruction of shielding? The quiet, the centering, the visualization? Remember - remember the time he taught us, and there was a bread riot on the streets of Meridian outside, and the distraction of those three delicious young girls lying bound in the next room; even still you managed to raise a shielding every one of us could sense. It felt as if you'd vanished behind high walls. My Whisper seemed to echo, like a voice upon smooth stone. Kain praised you, and I - "

Raziel closed his eyes, catching hold of the thread Turel had given him. The memory was clear, vivid-as if it had happened only yesterday, instead of millennia ago. That quiet room, that smelled of blood and dust, sealed away from the cacaphony of Meridian's streets below ... Kain's voice, dark and implacable, teaching them how to close off their mind against any intrusion, to make it opaque, unreadable ...

The cloudstuff surged forward, using Turel's momentary inattention to strike. Phantom claws slashed downward-and then rebounded, screeching off of the obsidian wall on which the vampires now stood. Almost double the height of its previous incarnation, the wall was nearly seamless, blocks of glassy stone fitted so closely that one could not put a talon-tip between them. Razored edges glittered cruelly upon the outward surface, and as a cloud tendril attempted to slip over those remade ramparts, it met that bladed edge and fell apart, shriveling into nothingness.

The damage of years could not be undone with a few words and a moment's concentration, however. That obsidian wall extended only a furlong or so to each side of where they stood, and beyond it, the same eroded stoneworks took its place.

"I remember," Raziel said slowly, without opening his eyes. "You were angry; you had believed that in this lesson, at least, we would be equals. You knew I cared little for the dusty tomes that Kain had set before us to study-you thought it the height of injustice that I could grasp the lesson so quickly regardless."

Turel hissed in a breath as a rupturing heat-haze rippled through the wall below, spreading out and down, strengthening, and he dropped to a half-crouch, steadying himself with one fist. The dragon-mist appeared to shrink as the wall under the brothers grew before it. With a low grinding wail of fury, the creature raced along the length of the wall, seeking a way around. The second reptile-thing had escaped the water's deadly embrace, though its mass was much-diminished, and even now the beast was roiling up over the distant edge of the cliff. But in the quiet interval before the inevitable attack, Turel focused upon Raziel, his mouth tight. Raziel had been twice Turel's years, then, in Meridian - how like him to parade his successes over mere whelps! And he and Turel *were* equals, eventually; with time and long practice, Turel became even better equipped than his brother to defend against most varieties of mental intrusions. But the bitterness of that day's lessons had never faded, not fully.

"And I gave you what you deserved, conceited brat and bootlicker that you were, that same evening. How carefully I husbanded my mental forces, accumulating energy throughout that afternoon! We two were ordered to hunt separately, but I trailed and found you, skulking on the wooden rooftiles of some merchant's abode, still sporting that shield, the making of which had come to you so easily. We argued over your rank arrogance. You put hand to blade -" Turel had certainly not been able to match his brother in swordwork then, and how well Raziel had known it! "-and I unleashed the mind-ram."

"Yes." Raziel opened his eyes again, turning to face Turel. In contrast to his brother's gloating countenance, Raziel's expression was remote, his golden gaze icy as he took in the other vampire's form. "It was the first time you had exercised your foolish envy-and it cost us greatly." The obsidian wall shimmered, pushing outward a few lengths more and a scattering of razor-edged and crystalline bladed protrusions springing from the base, as if summoned by the memory of that attack.

Before that night, Turel's jealous tantrums had been those of a fledge-intemperate, sudden, and just as swiftly forgotten. But this attack-meticulously thought out, nurtured tenderly by the envy in his younger brother's breast-had marked the first time their battles for primacy had taken such a deadly turn. It had been a foreshadowing of things to come ...

"Your attack was most effective, brother." Raziel had not thought Turel so adept at mind-magic; now, with centuries to blunt offended pride, he could admit that he had underestimated Kain's second son. "You struck me from that roof and onto another, with force enough to break several bones, as I recall." Raziel's voice hardened. "You are still so proud of that attack, aren't you? Even when our battling brought the vampire hunters down upon us all and ensured Kain's wrath, not to mention our own hunger for a good sevenday after. But none of that ever mattered to you, did it?"

The first of the two dragon-shadows hissed, flinching back from the expanding wall of obsidian - then it reached the unmaintained section. Its tattered wings spread, and it ghosted over in a rush of wind that whipped pebbles into the air. The clatter of them against the volcanic glass walls seemed like monstrous hail. The second creature, its margins thinned to wisps and tendrils, was more desperate. Howling, it flung itself against the bladed wall, goring itself open, clawing and striving for the top.

Turel ignored both, gold-green gaze glittering as he stalked towards Raziel. "Do you take me for Dumah? Consequences always matter, Raziel. Tell me, brother, do you recall the most immediate consequence of my assault?"

Raziel frowned. "Immediate consequences? Other than breaking open my shields and causing enough of a commotion to summon the Guard?" He searched through his memories of that night. Turel had challenged him, had flung an attack unlike any he had ever felt before ... it had fallen like one of his brother's great sledges, crashing against untested mental shields-and through them. Raziel could not escape that crushing force, pressing downward as if to obliterate his mind entirely ... and spurred on by fear, had reared back and flung ... *something* ...

It had been some manner of mental riposte, as Raziel remembered it. Purely untaught and born of desperation, he had twisted out of Turel's mental grip and delivered a stop-thrust straight to the heart of his attacker, all in the same moment.

Behind them, the massive forms of catapults began to shimmer into existence, great deadly machines made of dark wood and oiled steel, coiled and ready to strike.

Around the assembling engines of war, shadows stirred like memories more than half-forgotten, rising up in shapes tall and strong - and many-limbed. They stood at the ready, while their equipment was created.

The first dragon-shadow screamed its triumph, streaking down upon the brothers from behind with claws outstretched, deathly fire searing the very air in its wake. The thing's companion had dragged itself up the bladed wall, tearing itself to tatters even as it reached the top, and now it crested before them, a single maw of teeth and hell-breath, like the malevolent fume of some impossible wave.

And the last of the catapults solidified, standing dark and tall upon the solid ebony wall. The cold fires of the wraithblade sprang into existence in the bowl of each one, eager to fly and devour all it touched, and the hulking shades stepped forward to man the siege engines confidently.

Turel seized Raziel, dragged him into the close and armoring embrace of metal and bloodied flesh. His rumble of amusement vibrated through Raziel's bones. There's a reason for my absence, that sevenday thereafter. Well forged, Raziel.

And the world went white.

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